[SYRFox]

Hey there,
as you could guess here comes my top 30 of the year.
I've written a short description for each disc so that if you don't know it, you can know if you're likely to enjoy it or not - but they were first written in french and then translated to english so they might include a few translation errors, I don't know. Anyway, here it is. Hope you'll enjoy

30. Experimental Aircraft - Third Transmission: Though the second part kind of drags it down, Experimental Aircraft's still able to catch me for an hour of aerial shoegaze. A few tracks are especially amazing (Upper East Side, With A Gun), and the production is awesome.

29. Pivot - O Soundtrack My Heart: Even if some sounds are probably the most kitsch you'll hear this year, and some things are really forgettable, Warp's brand new sensation has enough interesting elements, making this album, between math rock, post rock and experimental music, clearly good - and especially the fantastic succession of Didn't I Furious, Epsilon and Nothing Hurts Machine

28. railcars - Cities Vs. Submarines EP: In only ten minutes and five tracks, Aria C Jalali's project gets us into its universe, between vocals reminding me of Xiu Xiu (which is understandable, as the EP recorded and produced by Jamie Stewart himself) and lo-fi, electronic programmations and nice melodies, full of details, both melodic and disconstructed.

27. Tickley Feather - Tickley Feather: Thirty minutes of childish synth sounds, basic structures, simple melodies, with no production and a lo-fi recording, kind of an USB MP3 dictaphone. Yet Annie Sachs knows how to pack this album with little pearls of simplicity, catchy and beautiful (The Python).

26. Sonic Youth, Merzbow & Mats Gustafsson - SYR8: Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth: Like the last SYR discs, this eighth volume is made of an hour of noisy and experimental ambiances, somewhere between noise, free jazz and experimental rock. And if this SYR8 is the noisiest of the series (Merzbow's touch I guess), it's as immersive as the others, and it's really a pleasure to drown in that harsh sonic flow.

25. Blood On The Wall - Liferz: Eleven tracks of dirty and distorded rock, powerfull and catchy. It's basic, and often stupid (Acid Fight), but still incredibly enjoyable. And a few tracks in particular are some of the best rock tracks of those last years: from Sorry Sorry Sarah to Liferz, you'll listen this album without feeling the time passing away.

24. Cheveu - Cheveu: Lo-fi and electronic post-punk coming from France, including ravaging riffs and high-volted vocals, hypnotic synths and crazy beatboxes. Eleven songs of no mercy, from the furious Dog to the hypnotic Superhero, raging and bitter, and very well-written.

23. The Hospitals - Hairdryer Peace: Those three persons love distorsion, and let us know. Their skeleton-like and atonal songs are always treated with a lo-fi layer of chirurgical distorsion (quite normal for Hospitals). But they're still songs and, if the first listens are difficult, you'll soon become addicted to the band's compositions, somewhere between garage punk, noise rock, harsh post-punk, etc.

22. Mogwai - The Hawk Is Howling: Post-rock pionners are back with a controverses album. It may seem boring, but that Hawk Is Howling is in my opinion one of the band's best albums, packed with an omnipresent melancholy, all along its ten tracks. It's the exact opposite of the terrible cover art: beautiful and touching.

21. These Are Powers - Taro Tarot EP: Yes, it's quite classical noise rock. But this trio (including Pat Noecker - ex-Liars, member of n0 things) sure knows how to write catchy songs, so it would be sad to stay on that classification. From the trippy Cockles to the tellurics Chipping Ice and Peel Some Off, that EP is full of great ideas and is really promising for the band's second album, in 2009

20. Truckasauras - Tea Parties, Guns & Valor: At first you could expect a 80's video game nostalgic delirium, but it clearly ain't it. This album, based on Gameboy, Commodore 64, etc, sounds, is actually an excellent electro disc, including dancable (the hit Fak!!!) and chill-out (Up, Up, Down, Down, L, R, L, R) parts. And there's even a cover of Airwolf/Super Copter 's theme, and just for daring doing this, congratulations.

19. Wavves - Wavves: If The Hospitals and No Age melted, it could probably do something like Nathan Williams, sole member of Wavves: a lot more melodic than the formers, really noisier than the latters, Wavves' music has this catchyness which seriously gives you the need to shake your head in rhythm.

18. High Places - High Places: 30 minutes of electronic pop, nocturnal and trippy, with tribal sounds and ethereal vocals. But unlike most contemporary indie-pop bands, those new yorkers haven't forgotten to write songs despite of the hype, and offer us ten great and luminous compositions.

17. Excepter - Debt Dept: The arty experimental electro combo comes back, after the good Alternation, with a really good album, with post-punk influences, full of huge bass lines (Burgers), and lyrics that are spoken, shouted or repeated infinitely so that you can understand them fully (Kill People!). By the way, the band now contains two new female singers and modify their voices a lot - and in particular, in high-pitched tones. In short: Excepter is more accessible but still messy. And it's excellent.

16. Abe Vigoda - Skeleton: Coming right from Los Angeles' scene, Abe Vigoda open with Skeleton their "tropical punk" to a poppier and lighter sound, yet kind of crazy: the band's gorgeous melodies are constantly affected by structures' changing, imprevisible explosions, dissonances... This Skeleton and all its gems deserve all your attention.

[SYRFox]

15. Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel: Bradofrd Cox has talent. Enough to release an excellent disc with Deerrhunter in 2007, and come back in 2008 with a new double album and his solo project debut album. Behind this romantic title are hidden 14 (20 on the European reissue) tracks, forming a noisy pop puzzle, a whole of an incredible cohesion. It's trippy, ethereal, beautiful. And the worst part is that he's already got a new one ready for next year.

14. Animal Collective - Water Curses EP: Only four songs, from Strawberry Jam's studio sessions, in order to wait for Merriweather Post Pavilion. Let's get back to those four songs, because they're totally worth the hearing: after the fantastic eponymous track, the band gives us three quiet and trippy tracks, giving this EP a cohesion that's not often reached for that kind of exercise.

13. Genghis Tron - Board Up The House: The perfect fusion of extreme metal and complex electronica. Even though it's incredibly violent, this album does not forget to sometimes let the intensity get down, with a few segments of aerial ambiance which are really beautiful. The power of the hardcore parts is then accentuated, and the vocalist's saturated screams, dissonant riffs and blasting programmations are getting reenforced by this contrast. Highly recommanded if you aren't allergic to hardcore screams.

12. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Continued: After the awesome and mysterious Cryptograms in 2007, I was a bit frightened, reading everywhere that the band had adopted more classical schemes. And in fact, well yes, Deerhunter's landscapes are now less strange than in the past. Still, nothing here is banal: all those noisy pop songs have something making them catchy and unique, whether it be the most energical or most ambient songs, most classical (on the first CD) or most experimental (second CD) ones. And finally, I think that this album really is as good as the previous one.

11. Autechre - Quaristice: Electronica masters are back, and this album is obviously different to their previous works: if they used to slowly explore soundcapes during long minutes, they're now going straight to where they want to, synthetising their ideas on a 3 or 4 minutes format - and therefore rising the number of tracks, and so atmospheres, of the disc. It implies that this disc will be hard to get into - as any ae album -, but it ends up offering a lot of magical compositions, of a constant complexity hiding unfathomed melodies and atmospheres. Congratulations.

10. No Age - Nouns: More accessible, less noisy than on Weirdo Rippers, No Age often let here their ambient side out to express their melodic side. The adaptation might be hard at the beginning, but the disc finally reveals its charms, and it's lot of great compositions, especially this awesome second half of album and it's succession of gems.

09. Indian Jewelry - Free Gold!: After the excellent Invasive Exotics, Indian Jewelry are back with a shoegaze-influenced album. But the Houston-based band hasn't lost its hypnotic capacities: the aerial singing and tribal and electronic rhythms will lead you to trance during fourteen tracks - and as much good compositions.

08. Neptune - Gong Lake: For this first album for Table Of Elements, the Boston band offer us an awesome noise rock album, alterning between experimental impulses and furious synthetic compositions, all of it being covered by a dark layer. Grey Shallows is one of the tracks of the year: percussive rhythms, hypnotic sounds, massive bass, explosions, everything's in its right place.

07. Women - Women: After only one year of existence, Women release this splendid eponymous, with gorgeous melodies, fantastic vocal harmonies, and a characteristic lo-fi production. This music seems inoffensive on first contact, but soon becomes addictive, and those songs will soon stay in your head all day.

06. The Present - World I See: Incredibly rich, this album only contains six tracks, but each one includes such a high number of ideas that it's unbelievable. From tribal sections to ambient segments, from subtle melodies treated with feedback to dissonant and noisy passages: it's really a difficult listen, but once you're into it, you will never get out of it.

05. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing: Melting the power of abrasive noise and post-rock nice melodies, hardcore screams and drone's oppressive side, Fuck Buttons builds in six tracks a saturated and mysterious soundscape: under layers of distorsion are hidden emotion-full melodies. Fuck Buttons clearly is one of the year's revelations.

04. Clark - Turning Dragon: Clark is back with a techno album. Infernal dancefloor disconstructed and complex rhythmics (on Volcan Veins for instance - best 2008 techno track?), but he does not forget the electronica melodies which have made its charm in the past. Oppressive, devastating, yet beautiful: a masterpiece.

03. Oneida - Preteen Weaponry: With this first volume of a trilogy that will end next year, Oneida give us a long drowning into an experimental and percussive atmosphere, slowly evolving, near trance. Long crescendos, slowly moving melodies, like a less oppressive cousin to Liars' Drum's Not Dead.

02. Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna: It was hard to me to think that Gang Gang Dance could possibly release something as good as their masterpiece God's Money. Well, they did with Saint Dymphna, which mixes a incredible number of styles, getting without trouble from one to the other, and all of that with an improbable cohesion: what we've got there is an almost perfect album, from the beginning to the end.

01. Mahjongg - Kontpab: Totally crazy, populated with strange polyrhythms, weird guitars, retromodernists or post-regressists synths, out of there voices, dephased, this disc is at the same time dancable, catchy, from beginning to the end, including a lot of improbable hits (Problems, Mercury, and the awesomfantasticgenius Kottbusser Torr). It's original, mad, new, unclassifiable, yet amazingly groovy: everything on there can move your brain and your legs at the same time. In short: genius.

[atsonicpark]

Yeah, that Neptune album is amazing, can't believe how many people overlooked it. I dig that Mahjongg album too, Problems is amazing. They were great live. The only real huge stinker on your list.. in my opinion.. is that Genghis Tron album. It's one of the worst albums I heard all year.

[SYRFox]

I don't know, I'm not really a metal fan (even though I enjoy hardcore and doom), but that album really got me, I found it much better than their previous one.

I've yet to see Mahjongg live, they must really be great

[atsonicpark]

They were, I was lucky to see them under a big tent!

Maybe it's becuase I am a fan of metal that I don't like Genghis Tron. Personally, they have always had moments of "that was some interesting Fruity Loops programming" (though they didn't use Fruity on the new album, I'm pretty sure) and moments of "this is really annoying the shit out of me." The new one just annoyed me way more than the others and I don't think I'm going to bother with them again. Can't deny that it was well-made/well-produced though.

[fugazifan]

cool list.
sorry to be the stinker, but hospitals are oh so incredibly tonal (ie not atonal)

[noisereductions]

Good list, man. WATER CURSES came very close to making my Top 10.

[mil_pl]

good fox.

[acousticrock87]

Originally Posted by fugazifan

cool list.
sorry to be the stinker, but hospitals are oh so incredibly tonal (ie not atonal)

Yeah, they are. I think it's a good thing, but yeah. A nifty pick, either way.

[davenotdead]

oh man, you put GGD right where I have them... and Clark in the top 10 too. my list has been almost done for weeks now... but i keep tweaking it here and there

[batreleaser]

Genghis Trom has to be one of the stupidest bands ever. They'd probably be ok if they abandoned the metal shtick, because listen folks, that is as far from Heavy Metal as agressive rock music gets.

[fugazifan]

Originally Posted by batreleaser

Genghis Trom has to be one of the stupidest bands ever. They'd probably be ok if they abandoned the metal shtick, because listen folks, that is as far from Heavy Metal as agressive rock music gets.

you keep on doing this and never explain yourself. you also sai that fleet foxes are the stpidest band ever, or something similar. what makes a band stupid?
and what about the fleet foxes makes them everything thats bad about music?

[atsonicpark]

They have Genghis Tron albums at walmart (no, that's not part of my criticism of them), and on them it says "AS IF MEGA MAN WAS PROGRAMMED BY NAPALM DEATH!" or something stupid like that.

[SYRFox]

yeah it says "Like the soundtrack to Mega Man as scored by Napalm Death", which is a quote from Revolver magazine (I have that Relapse paper under my eyes as I kept it after I bought the album)
this said, I still think this album is great

[atsonicpark]

Haha, thank you for the clarification. It made me laugh, but I hope people don't take it seriously.

[PAULYBEE2656]

crackin list... agreed on genghis tron album.. its awful....

now i gotta hear this atlas sound album!

[SYRFox]

Originally Posted by westernquinoxstillrocks

not trying to piss anyone off but thats the worst fucking list ive ever seen

i'm glad you like it